When I first started blogging in 2008, there was a vibrant group of small independent conservative blogs, many if not most composed of newbies like me. There was cohesiveness of opposition to Obamacare and the Obama-Reid-Pelosi axis. No one made any money, it was a cause.

We survived emotionally on the kindness of bigger blogs which generously spread not just traffic, but more important, attention. I can’t tell you how much it meant to my morale to get noticed.

There is no way Legal Insurrection could have grown without the help of others. I have done my best to pay back that kindness by spreading links to smaller conservative blogs.

I’ve noticed a change.

There has been a corporatization and consolidation of the conservative blogosphere, and the kindness to strangers seems to be waning. There’s no reason to name names; these are good people who are following a natural business path. (Thankfully, HE has not gone corporate.)

And why should anyone spread the wealth? Why shouldn’t small conservative blogs have to prove their worth to readership? “Cry me a river that no one links,” probably is a justified respose.

Yet these small conservative blogs play an important role. I’ve highlighted the role of Not One More Red Cent in the rise of Marco Rubio against establishment hack Charlie Crist. There are numerous other examples. I’d like to think that we made a difference every now and then.

I have more questions than answers.

But I do see a change coming to the small conservative blog blogosphere,

Reactions

Comments

I need you to keep the faith. The fact is that I share many of your ideas and values but you are a voice on the academic front that I as a Realtor would not have the same clout when presenting an idea.

Now especially in the Dark Ages of Obama we need a beacon to keep our bearings.

William, I recall your mention that you didn’t participate in politics before Obama’s election in 2008. Your blog has been a model of personal transformation to the political, with a massive impact on the political process. I don’t worry about the decline of the blogosphere, only so much as people will find ways to oppose this regime through networking of some sort. That said, blogging has to be a love of labor, as in my case. As an academic who lives politics, it’s just one more thing that I do. Sometimes I’m more activist than other times. A good example is in 2009 when I was organizing local tea parties. Combined, all that activism, nationwide, led to the 2010 GOP takeover of the House. We need to rekindle that grassroots spirit. We need to heal divides on the right, suck it up and move forward. I’m confident small blogs will be a part of that effort. For sure mine will, although I’m more a “medium” blog, I would guess.

Now that we know this. I suggest every conservative on Twitter or on Facebook to perhaps create Spanish Versions of their accounts and make a habit of using google translate and start posting conservative news at these sites.

I started blogging just after this election. . Although I am still devoid a general purpose with the effort. I’m not sure just what I want to say or needs to be said or what sort of brand I’ll have. I haven’t even attempted to advertise. But eventually when I get to know I’m doing I’ll make something out of it.
legalizehazing.wordpress.com

We have a new cause (besides ourselves!) — dumping Boehner. Dumping this clown is the only hope we have. We are on a mission to see to it that tiger Rep. Peter King replaces Boehner as Speaker before the 2013 term. We need everyone to join the movement.

It could get worse before it gets better, but it will eventually get better. Get on the band wagon and fight to regain what we have lost.

Number one priority: fight to replace Boehner, or post your complaints on your bathroom mirror instead of here. Just imagine how staggered the left will be — and how wounded Obama will eventually be — if Boehner is tossed and Rep. Peter King takes his place.

I’d be curious to see where you think it’s going but I share your angst. The time it takes to keep this up with only hourly “hits” to keep you going taxes ones energy. I keep hoping to have a “how you like me know” ala Toby Keith moment with my wife if my blog ever really gets notice and traffic surges. After four years, still waiting. Actually thought about throwing in the towel since Obama got re-elected as I started blogging because of his candidacy in 2008. Liberals are relentless and God help us if there is no one to stand in their way or turn back the tide. So, I’ll try and do my part, no matter how feeble it is. For my conscience and my family, I have to do something.

American businesses have always had the urge to merge, creating bigger entities with more leveraged buying power, etc. etc. etc. It seems to me that many small conservative bloggers are echo chambers, frequently relying on links to bigger blogs. I find that by visiting here, Malkin, Instapundit, Hot Air, and glancing at Drudge’s headlines keeps me fairly up to date on a daily basis. At least I know the hot button issues and can chase links to find out more.

I read Jay Nordlinger just because he’s a great writer and succinct in his Impromptus column. Steyn’s op-eds are almost always worth the time to read, as are VDH’s. I have followed various small-time bloggers, usually because I like their comments on bigger blogs and click to see if they have their own blog. It is almost always the case that, for whatever reason, their blogs trail off and go for weeks with no updates.

There are few core principles that most issues can be traced back to. The reason I think blogs have their limitations is that there are only so many ways you can express the same few core issues. The best writers (and luckiest who happen to be best known) are the ones that others link to. The small-time bloggers simply aren’t offering the same quality.

That’s not a shot, that’s reality.

I don’t pretend that my ramblings are on par with Steyn or Malkin. I’m not a journalist or writer. I own a business. Commenting and blogging is something I can do when I’m not operating my business. Most small bloggers are in a similar situation.

After a blistering attack on G.W.Bush, a Republican Senator defended him by pointing out that, first, he had kept two of the sorriest sum bitches ever to serve in the Senate from being President. Meaning, Gore and Kerry.

Professor,
I hope you’ll continue. If you can look back 20 years from now and say, well, I helped prevent Fauxcahontas Warren from ever being President, then you’ve achieved a great thing for this nation.

You’ve been more of a reporter than most full time reporters int he legacy media. There’s no shortage of blogs that post whatever the news of the day is and add a little commentary. You’ve broken new stories. That’s no small thing.

GS, what are you talking about? If anywhere you will see a lot of sympathy and understanding for minorities in conservative blogs, much more than elsewhere. As legalizehazing said, other than some stupid comments in the comment section (which happens everywhere without distinction), what has been said that is offensive to minorities? I have no idea and believe me, I read as many as I can, and as the daughter of refugees from Communism, I find solace and a kindred spirit in the conservative blogosphere.

re: “There is too much craziness in the conservative blogosphere. I find myself increasingly reluctant to read, let alone to comment.”

How different we are! My major complaint with the conservative blogging world is the vanilla PCism that seems so prevalent. I seek both passion and an intelligent rational argument – not some PC elitist format. Anger and elation, discouragement and sorrow – these are all valid expressions of the human experience. I feel when these are omitted from blog posts or comments, then I’m wasting my time.

As one man told me, he likes his beef stew with big chunks served on a plate – standing tall by itself! I could stop calling that watery broth with diced veggies stew! I like my blogs in the same fashion he liked his stew!

Craziness? I’m baffled. The Conservative bloggers are very individualistic. They do not follow like sheep. They actually think. And they don’t spew hate as they do on the Left, at least not on any blogs that I read.

GS:
Take heart.
Being your parents are Soviet emigres, try taking a look at this blog (thepeoplescube.com), authored by former Soviet propaganda artist Oleg Atbashian — who helped start many conservative blogs, including TheFineReport.com.

I think any solid stance on civil rights before the current 23? weeks or so is suicide for the party. But we should be clear now, before we gestate more Akins and Mourdochs.

Can we be clear? When do “WE” believe civil rights start?

Reader ratings and follow-on comments imply that the answer to the first question is No.

I could go on, but the foregoing should make my point.

3. Real Conservatives™ are quite crazy enough to wreck the country. It’s no comfort that they’re less crazy than leftists.

4. I respect Bill and appreciate his efforts. His posts are worthwhile even when I disagree: perhaps especially when I disagree. (And I miss Kathleen’s forward-looking optimism.) However, my engagement with the comment section, here and elsewhere, has fallen as the blog’s popularity has risen beyond a certain point. Therein may lie a rule of thumb.

I’m still in Phase 1 of mourning Romney’s loss and consequently have stayed away from reading my favorite blogs. And with a little help from Sandy, we’re still without TV and Internet. It has helped enormously to be unplugged.

That said, before the election, I derived great joy coming here every day. So too reading The Lonely Conservative, a fabulous blogger from upstate New York. Kudos to both of you for being so devoted to your fans.

I have 53 blogs in my Google Reader list (I see that 17 of them are inactive, so it’s time for an update). I’ve noticed that when a popular blogger joins a consolidated blog, the writer invariably stops interacting with the readers. Also, blogs like Michelle Malkin and Hot Air allow comments from readers, but they have to be registered, and registration is closed. Reading the comments and adding your own opinion is half the fun of reading blogs, so I’ve unsubscribed from those two. And I’ve noticed that a few of the conservative blogs allow the worst kind of racism, obscenity, and insults from the readers and do nothing to try to control it. In my mind that furthers the leftie stereotype of conservatives as knuckle-dragging Neanderthals, and hurts the cause. On the other hand, blogs like yours are a real joy to read. Thank you for taking the high road.

re: “I’ve noticed that a few of the conservative blogs allow the worst kind of racism, obscenity, and insults from the readers and do nothing to try to control it. In my mind that furthers the leftie stereotype of conservatives as knuckle-dragging Neanderthals, and hurts the cause. On the other hand, blogs like yours are a real joy to read. Thank you for taking the high road.”

ROFL Yup, everyone should take the high road in life. That’s what Obama did, and he won the presidential election. Oops…maybe not the high road.

Well, since it’s Veterans Day, that’s how our Revolutionary Soldiers fought the British and won. Oops…wrong again. Those sneaky American’s stood behind trees sniping at the Red Coats! ROFL Imagine someone so stupid to march through a forest wearing a red coat, while going to a gunfight!

Well, if we can’t be winners we should certainly be ‘good’ losers, dontcha think?

As for racism… I would never call a terrorist attack on American soil as coming from Muslim jihadi’s. Everyone knows that Islam is a religion of peace.

Great points, Dr. Jacobson. You were kind enough to link to my blog, as were a handful of others. Alas, it was the time commitment that ultimately led me into an extended – and probably permanent – hiatus.

It is enormously gratifying to see those page views ramp up but eventually I found that the combination of 1) trying to write interesting/entertaining posts, 2) market the blog, and, oh yeah, 3) live your life was just one too many.

The larger blogs have little incentive to promote potential competitors; which is fully understandable (especially for a Republican) but nonetheless a tad disappointing if you believe this is a ’cause’ rather than a competitive market and that most of us are on the same side. Oh well, c’est la vie …

There is strength in numbers. And the big bloggers too often are the domesticated pets of the left. We need more bloggers who are still in the wild, and not yet house-trained.

I just wish this one wasn’t so difficult to log on to when I want to leave a comment. I usually come via twitter, where it’s networkedblogs.com. But to log in, I need to go to legalinsurrection.com, or else it doesn’t work. Something not quite right with redirects?

My small conservative blog readership grew sharply by virtue of linkbacks/trackbacks/pingbacks aka linky-love by citing larger influential conservative blogs’ articles with links from my articles and they in turn published referrer links back to my articles.

Occasionally one of my articles or media was cited directly by their articles including a hat/tip including yours Professor.

The articles I wrote in support of Scott Brown leading up to his 2010 victory elevated me to the point WordPress notified me I had broken into the top 100 wordpress blogs at 98th position of approximately 39 million wordpress blogs at that time.

Then… all the 1st tier blogs began a trend of refraining from citing/publishing referrer links back to my blog and almost all other small blogs.

The noted exception was your blog, Professor, which continued to cite mine.
That coupled with my absences due to periodic health issues and no associate writers to carry the load further reduced readership.

The final straw for my motivation to write was the GOP forcing out Sarah Palin as a 2012 primary contender and I took peer heat for it.

Writing a blog with as many three-six articles in a day is a big job and without enough support from 1st tier blogs, it was a losing readership battle.

(I URGE ALL OF YOU TO READ THIS POST IN ITS ENTIRETY; IF YOU SKIP THE KUBLER-ROSS PART, PLEASE READ THE REST:)

The Kübler-Ross model, commonly known as The Five Stages of Grief:

The stages, popularly known by the acronym DABDA, include:[2]

Denial — “I feel fine.”; “This can’t be happening, not to me.”
Denial is usually only a temporary defense for the individual. This feeling is generally replaced with heightened awareness of possessions and individuals that will be left behind after death. Denial can be conscious or unconscious refusal to accept facts, information, or the reality of the situation. Denial is a defense mechanism and some people can become locked in this stage.

Anger — “Why me? It’s not fair!”; “How can this happen to me?”; ‘”Who is to blame?”
Once in the second stage, the individual recognizes that denial cannot continue. Because of anger, the person is very difficult to care for due to misplaced feelings of rage and envy. Anger can manifest itself in different ways. People can be angry with themselves, or with others, and especially those who are close to them. It is important to remain detached and nonjudgmental when dealing with a person experiencing anger from grief.

Bargaining — “I’ll do anything for a few more years.”; “I will give my life savings if…”
The third stage involves the hope that the individual can somehow postpone or delay death. Usually, the negotiation for an extended life is made with a higher power in exchange for a reformed lifestyle. Psychologically, the individual is saying, “I understand I will die, but if I could just do something to buy more time…” People facing less serious trauma can bargain or seek to negotiate a compromise. For example “Can we still be friends?..” when facing a break-up. Bargaining rarely provides a sustainable solution, especially if it’s a matter of life or death.

Depression — “I’m so sad, why bother with anything?”; “I’m going to die soon so what’s the point?”; “I miss my loved one, why go on?”
During the fourth stage, the dying person begins to understand the certainty of death. Because of this, the individual may become silent, refuse visitors and spend much of the time crying and grieving. This process allows the dying person to disconnect from things of love and affection. It is not recommended to attempt to cheer up an individual who is in this stage. It is an important time for grieving that must be processed. Depression could be referred to as the dress rehearsal for the ‘aftermath’. It is a kind of acceptance with emotional attachment. It’s natural to feel sadness, regret, fear, and uncertainty when going through this stage. Feeling those emotions shows that the person has begun to accept the situation.

Acceptance — “It’s going to be okay.”; “I can’t fight it, I may as well prepare for it.”
In this last stage, individuals begin to come to terms with their mortality, or that of a loved one, or other tragic event. This stage varies according to the person’s situation. People dying can enter this stage a long time before the people they leave behind, who must pass through their own individual stages of dealing with the grief.

COULD YOU PEOPLE HURRY UP AND ENTER THE ‘ACCEPTANCE’ PHASE SO WE CAN GET ON WITH BUSINESS? WE HAVE 57,000,000 PEOPLE WHO VOTED OUR WAY — AND THREE MILLION OF US STAYED HOME. HAD THEY VOTED, WE WOULD HAVE WON. OBAMA’S HONEYMOON WILL SOON END, AS THE ECONOMY HITS THE SKIDS ONCE AGAIN, AND WAR BREAKS OUT IN THE MIDDLE EAST. SO —

OUR AGENDA:
1-Get back to battle stations first thing Monday morning.
2-Boycott ALL organizations corrupted by leftism. (That means your tv set, essentially.)
3-Work to install a fighter in the Speaker position before the new Congress begins in January.
4-Being you have some extra money left over from boycotting leftist organizations (magazines, newspapers, big businesses, etc.) donate to blogs — all of them. Five bucks here, 20 buck there, you get the picture. It’s not the amount of money — it is the thought, and it spurs people on. Essentially, it is ‘feedback:’ “I’m reading you, keep up the good work.”

Remember, the Obama high will soon crash. His 50% approval rating will soon nose dive. If we have the right people in position (Speaker, Speaker, Speaker) we can kick ass and take names…

Professor, as one who has commented here and been linked by you, I appreciate your work and your link generosity. But being a small blogger in the dextrosphere nowadays is like being in steerage on the Titanic; we’re having all the fun and not really worried about the deck chairs.

As any industry matures, consolidation sets in. It’s just a fact of everyday business life. Many on the lunatic fringe have damaged the conservative brand and now many of the bigger blogs are now rolling up the carpet in order to ensure their own survival. Whether LI survives depends largely on your ability to tough it out and put in the hours required and accept the fact that there may never be much beyond little or no pay.

its rough getting a site running.
I can’t use google adsense since they canceled my account over what I suspect is posting some gun sale info.
course they are not required to tell you why or pay if they owe you anything.

members of my site ( http://www.theconservativevoices.com ) have free blogs to use also, where they can post whatever they want. lot of benefits actually as I have the whole invisionpower suite, but its hard to get members.
people seem to want to just post comments on what other people write.
on a dedicated so it costs a bunch each month too.

doesn’t do what I need, I also have forum, articles and database driven pages, blogs, download center, gallery, a commerce center under that site.
I run a clipbucket video processing site on the server (very resource intensive) to host streamable videos (to feed the main site) and convert to mp4.
main site is really article and forum driven.
and I hate wordpress, every darned security thing I deal with os usually due to a wp bug exploited and then passed on.

While everyone is being philosophical and thoughtful, I hope it’s okay if I just express my own state of mind at the moment in light of the years of time, money, effort and hope (yes, real hope) that went into seeking change (yes, real problem-solving change), and the past soul-crushingly disappointing week.

First of all, let me thank Professor Jacobson for linking to my blog.
I haesome family issues now, and was considering going on a semi-hiatus after the election because I expected Romney to win because I anticipated decline of interest in conservative blogs. I’ll probably go on a quarter-hiatus.

I’d like to thank Professor Jacobson for NOT linking to TheFineReport. (I don’t think we could handle the pressure of producing anything other than the low-brow, shoddy content we see to have become known for. (Though, admit it: is often very funny.))

[…] still will be blogging here, as I agree with Professor Jacobson that we need to promote smaller conservative blogs and this remains a great place for me to highlight Capitalist Heroes. However, I will be writing more for College Insurrection and, hopefully, contributing a few […]

Unfortunately, this latest election showed the continuing staying power of the MSM. (I had hoped that it would be their last stand.) It is difficult to get traction if the MSM controls the narrative.
On Friday I was listening to news stations discussing the “fiscal cliff.” The main question from the anchors was whether Boehner would compromise! Bob Woodward (no right wing ideologue) reported that it was Obama who scuttled the last negotiations after Boehner and Reid agreed on a package.
Yet the narrative is how Obama is trying to get the rich to pay “their fair share.” This is the narrative set by the NYT and WaPo and perpetuated on CBS News (aided by the likes of Gwen Ifill) and local news reports. Any inconvenient facts are filtered out.
The coverage the MSM have is tremendous and if one is not discerning, they, in their somber, no nonsense voices dripping with phony gravitas sound convincing. There is no other truth.
Sure talk radio exists, but for whatever reason, despite its popularity, doesn’t have the ability to convince the somnambulant electorate otherwise.
I’m guessing that a lot more grass roots effort is needed. Not to convince the converted or the never to be converted; but to convince the unaware.
You and Doug Ross do excellent work. I’d also like to point out the work of the Watcher’s Council and its indefatigable leader JoshuaPundit.
Most of all “small” conservative blogs need to reach out to friends and neighbors who aren’t necessarily committed but who are under-informed due to the saturation of the hopelessly compromised MSM.

As a conservative Latina, I’m already posting conservative values on Facebook. Family and friends are responding to them. I believe the important thing is that they hear positive conservative values which they don’t hear about very much. One of the things we must do is to push our ideas in a more forceful manner. No more Mr. Nice Guy.

Prof I don’t know if you’ve seen it in any logs but I have a links database that also links to youhttp://www.theconservativevoices.com/links/
so if you ever see any odd stuff from my end its probably someone hit that then came here

Operating a blog requires a lot of time. I had one for a couple of years starting in 2003(?). It was my version of political cartoons using photoshop – photo manipulations, special effects and captions at joeham.com. It was a lot of work and zero money. By the time the blog started receiving some recognition I was burned out. Wayback Machine archived a small portion of our work, but missed crawling our best stuff. Maybe some day we’ll crank up again.

It is true that many more successful bloggers refuse to link to, reply, or acknowledge smaller blogs–they have their own exclusive club of people they have known for ages, and it is nearly impossible to break into it. Some will not even let newcomers comment on their blogs. But it has been this way for some time.
This is not a reason to give up, however. It just means that smaller blogs have to adapt to the situation, support each other, and to continue to put out good content.
The biggest avalanche of hits my blog has ever received came from Andrew Sullivan linking to a posts about Palin/Perry. I could not buy a hit from the big conservative names, yet he linked to me. Sadly, the cross section of his readers does not at all match the cross section of my readers (Christian, conservative/libertarian), so while I got a lot of comments, I got no new followers from that link. It was nice to see the traffic spike that way, though. I have had much smaller avalanches of hits from other people linking to my blog, but it has never been people I would have expected.
The reason people have linked to my blog, however, has always been the same: People were linking to content that they could not find anywhere else, content that spoke to the moment. Above all else, content still sells. If you have good content, it is possible to break through the fog and make a mark. It just takes time.

I run a little blog Flares into Darkness that started out as a group blog and dwindled down to just me. It is only partly political, I also do oddball posts about technology, art and whatever else strikes my fancy.

I can’t say I make any real effort to chase traffic, so I can’t complain too much about not having much traffic. I do appreciate it when I pop up in Professor Jacobson’s ‘Blog of the Day’, it’s always a nice bump in traffic for me.

As for other small conservative blogs, I link to a number in my blogroll.

There still are small conservative blogs, like The First Street Journal, and we certainly need all of the help and link-love we can get to try and grow a bit bigger.

Rush Limbaugh once pointed out that the election of Democrats was better for him, because it gave him more ammunition and better growth for his radio program; no one did more for Mr Limbaugh than Bill Clinton! The next four years will seem miserable in a lot of ways, but it’ll sure give us a lot about which to write.

And the biggest thing that larger blogs could do for smaller ones? Enable trackbacks and pingbacks! It used to be a pretty standard way of helping, but I suppose that the spammers ruined that. Still, I use the Akismet anti-spam plug-in, and it seems to catch virtually everything in the way of spam.

I have to agree that the way of things is that in the beginning, you are going to have a lot of people out there, and eventually, you will end up with fewer players. Much of this is due to market forces; some blogs are better than others and have grown, others are good but have not received much attention, and then there are tons of them that are not necessarily unique. Add to that that serious blogging takes a lot of time, and the “marketplace” is already crowded. (Not to mention that fewer people blog in general, and many people have switched to Facebook and/or Twitter formats). It’s not going to be that blogging dies, but the next big thing is probably going to be something that is a little bit different as far as subject and scope. I really enjoy this blog, even if I don’t comment much.

I am not at all sure why the mention and attention about the Not One More Red Cent blogger blog. It was a one trick pony with limited hits (58K over 4 years) and only 234 posts total. The last post was made in January 2012.

It sounds very much like my own ego blog which covers about the same time period has 560 posts and about the same traffic.

I’ve been blogging for probably 6-8 years. At one point, it was 4-5 times a week. It’s a ton of time, and even on a free site like “blogger” there are costs. Thought I could make a difference. Didn’t matter. The deck was stacked and the house won as always. I don’t know if I’m done, but I’ll never be as vigorous as I was.

Not sure what you’re talking about, Prof. We receive virtually no links, having slogged away for years at our blog. Thus we have few regularr readers, other than locally. Meh. We write for different reasons, though we took a few days off after the last election debacle. We’re not going anywhere.

Are you speaking of discouragement? Of course. It’s a commitment. I read one “big” blogger who sort of made fun of small bloggers and, frankly, it angered me. Some of blogging success is determined by social status. Some by talent (of course). And some is pure dumb luck.

But the truth is that blogging/writing for some of us isn’t really about notoriety. It’s about finding truth and doing what’s right for you when you’re sitting on your couch, clicking on your laptop.

It’s doing what you can as one little old person out there trying to preserve our way of life for our kids.

I’ve been blogging for nearly seven years. I have 3,340 posts on my blog and I’ve written most of them; my family co-blogs and the kids occasionally post things, too. I don’t know that I’ve ever had more than 400 page views in a day, but my stuff gets linked here and there. I don’t worry about the traffic. Some days I write multiple posts. Most days I write at least one thing, because my small audience expects it. And I love the challenge.

I never assumed I’d become famous through blogging, but it’s never been about that. I won’t stop because the stakes are too high.

I appreciate what you do, Professor, and I’m glad you have the audience you’ve earned.